Honorary degree citation: Salah Bachir

July 5, 2022

Delivered by Professor Kathryn Carter

The achievements of Salah Bachir, one of Canada’s most influential philanthropists and patrons of art, could take a long time to list, so I will share only a few of the highlights. Until January of this year, he was the president of Cineplex Media, where he negotiated a partnership between Scotiabank and Cineplex that led to the Scene Card (many of you know it).

His beginnings were in Lebanon, a country he left at the age of 10 with four siblings. After arriving in Canada, activities in his early adult life reflected themes that would be central to his later achievements: one involved grassroots fundraising for Cesar Chavez, the American civil rights activist, and the other involved starting a magazine called Videomania with his brother in the early days of VCRs. Since then, Salah Bachir has held significant and successful roles in the Canadian entertainment industry, but his wide-ranging philanthropic interests really illuminate his passion for entrepreneurship, social justice, fundraising and art.

As a patron of the arts, he has nurtured the careers of several Canadian visual artists while building up a massive collection of over 3,000 pieces of contemporary art. A selection was highlighted at the Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art in 2014. Another selection of Andy Warhol’s work from his vast collection was mounted at the Oakville Galleries in 2006. He has not only donated important art to galleries in Canada and around the world, but has actively supported the Art Gallery of Ontario. His contributions to contemporary Canadian art are recognized at galleries across Canada.

Salah Bachir has devoted himself to advancing equity and inclusion for the 2SLGBTQ+ community. He sponsors Toronto’s Buddies in Bad Times Theatre and a queer comedy festival called “We’re Funny That Way” instituted the “Salah Bachir Award,” which is presented to a person or group for work to advance 2SLGBTQ+ causes. He has raised millions of dollars for AIDS research and for the 519 Community Centre, a Toronto organization dedicated to advocacy for the inclusion of 2SLGBTQ+ communities, among other endeavours.

His fundraising skills for cherished causes are legendary and often involve spectacular events where he arrives wearing pearls and rococo brooches. Nicknamed “Gala Salah” for these events, he has recently focussed on health care. St. Joseph’s Health Centre in Toronto now has the Bachir Yerex Family Dialysis Centre, named in honour of Bachir and his husband, Jacob Yerex. The glamourous icing on the cake of all of these accomplishments, surely, is that Toronto Life magazine named this “bejewelled philanthropist” one of Toronto’s “most stylish” citizens in 2018. I would also like to thank him for his support of my hometown of Paris, Ontario, a small idyll not far from here that he has adopted as his own.

It is my honour to introduce to you today a man who has pursued the business of art and storytelling with great joy, great vigor, and tremendous generosity of spirit, justice and vision.

Madam Chancellor, I am instructed by the Senate of the university to request that you admit to the degree of Doctor of Laws, honoris causa, Salah Bachir.